Platinum News

Why can’t I get feedback on Platinum CAT exams? (Ah, but you can!)

This article was originally posted in our July 2017 Newsletter, by Doug Smith, CEO, Medical Educator

Students often mention that on the CAT exams they do not receive any feedback. We demonstrated in the past (Sept. 2014 ) that we do provide a tremendous amount of constructive feedback to the students regarding weak and strong areas. What the students are looking for, however, are the answers to the questions and the rationale which we do not provide them directly. The keyword though is directly. If a student (is in an instructor led course) selects “provide feedback”, then the questions, choices, key, and rationale are all sent to the instructor who can then share with the student as they deem appropriate.

It may also be of interest for you to know that every question that is in the Adaptive bank is also in the test building bank. So if you are diligently providing the students with a solid exposure to the questions in the bank as you are creating quizzes and tests, and you are providing them with level 4 feedback (the level that shows the correct answer, their choice, and the rationale), the student is already seeing the answers and rationale to the CAT. Finally, we suggest instructors also consider creating a quizzes and tests based on weak areas identified with the CAT environment and provide the student with this quiz and level 4 reporting. Doing this will provide the student with questions that were in the Adaptive Test (probably many more) with answers.

Note: It is because these banks are the same that we strongly encourage schools to use our premade final exams as none of these questions can be found in either previously mentioned bank.

The underlying theme is that we do not want students mining our bank or memorizing the questions and answers. This will completely defeat the effectiveness of CAT testing. What we do recommend is the instructors assisting in providing remediation to the students as the instructor sees fit.